My First Year in Hong Kong
July 2019: Moving to Hong Kong as a Missionary
TRANSITIONING INTO FULL-TIME MISSIONS |
At first, I thought transitioning would be easy. To be honest, it was very smooth, due to the fact that I had spent more than 6 months in Hong Kong before officially moving. The challenges about transitioning were mostly being away from my family, adjusting to a new lifestyle, new schedules, meeting new people at the churches I had been visiting (Island ECC, River Grace Evangelical Church). Trusting God with all my finances was definitely new to me. After years of having a steady income to financially be supported month to month, it had definitely been a big life change with my finances.
I transitioned into a role at YWAM Harbour City where my responsibilities were to manage their social media, branding, and help with designing a new website. I also had the freedom to work on other creative projects such as creating stationery cards to help our training schools fundraise for outreaches. At our base, every staff has their own specific role but often we all join and work together - whether it involves cleaning, cooking meals, planning outreaches, leading worship, anything that is available for us to serve!
A Loving Community | Protests | Local Outreaches
I’ve been able to be part of loving communities! We have a Spanish fellowship where most of us come from Venezuela and are now living in Hong Kong. In November 2019, we had a celebration and made Venezuelan arepas together!
Protests in Hong Kong started on June 2019. I came in July, and all throughout the months until December, there was a lot of tension and political unrest. With YWAM Harbour City, we fasted together, prayed and interceded for our city and the youth!
Even with ongoing protests, we had a few local outreaches, reaching out to families, Christian programs with schools. We did many prayer walks along the areas were protests would usually happen in the weekends.
I’ve been able to use design skills to help create encouraging content on social media. I was also able to use traditional art during worship times, encouragement cards, and draw portraits during evangelistic outreaches.
Chiangmai, Thailand: Art Workshops and Arts Festival
In November, I was able to join “AWAKE”, an arts festival in Chiang Mai, Thailand. A couple days before the festival, we had 2 days of workshops. I was able to join a watercolor workshop with an art professor from the UofN Jeju Island campus (South Korea).
I was able to meet Musa Njoko, a world renowned South African Christian speaker and artist. Her testimony was impacting for many in Chiang Mai, speaking about identity and value. It was fun to illustrate her while she was performing!
2020: Unexpected. Uncertain. Walking in Faith.
FELLOWSHIP AND MINISTRIES BECAME ONLINE |
We first heard about COVID-19 around late December. We didn’t know how much it would affect the whole world. Our ministries started going online and my small group was also online. Learning to lead a small group from Island ECC (international church) through COVID-19 season has been a new experience. I was encouraged to see how our group continued sharing online, gathering to worship and praying for one another.
COVID-19, Serving the Base, and Ministry Opportunities
Ministry during COVID-19
During worship and intercession times in the mornings, as a base, we received from God to do outreaches in a different way. We got contacts for 2 local hospitals and quarantine centers, where we got to send over 800 encouragement cards and 100 care packages to COVID-19 patients and quarantined families.
Serving the Base
For 2 months and a half, I was able to help twice a week to cook lunch meals for the DTS students and staff. Sometimes we had up to 30 people eating at a time! It was a blessing to have my mom help me in the kitchen.
Big Project: Redesigning our Website
This has been our biggest creative project yet! Creating a website is not an easy task, it takes a whole team! Our Creative Media team has been working hard to figure out ways to improve our digital communications.
Things to Celebrate! 🎉
With YWAM Harbour City, from July 2019 until now, together we were able to:
Engage with Hong Kong youth while doing street evangelism
Send out 800+ encouragement cards for COVID-19
Run 2 Discipleship Training Schools (6 months missions training) in September 2019 and January 2020 and soon a training program called “School of Worship” starting in August
Online outreaches through videos and social media engaging more than 1000 people
Do outreaches in Hong Kong and Thailand
Local outreaches to refugees, asylum seekers, women in the red light districts, primary & secondary schools, prison ministry, homeless, and the elderly
A BIG THANK YOU for my community of brothers and sisters who have financially supporting me during my first year!
What’s Next?
I have exciting news! My sister and I will be doing a 3 month training program called “School of Worship” at YWAM Harbour City, starting on August 10th! We will have 2 months of classes and 1 month of outreach. Jackie and I will be classmates again! The school costs around $1025 USD ($8000 HKD) per student during lecture phase, if you feel led to give towards our school fees, please let me know!
We are not sure of what outreach will look like, but this year’s School of Worship is focused on Hong Kong! God is definitely moving in our city and we want to be part of His mission!
